Piven is a professor at the City College of New York. In 1966, she and her late husband, Richard Cloward, wrote an article for The Nation outlining a plan to help the poor of New York and other big cities to get on welfare.

In their research, they found that not all the poor who were eligible to receive welfare actually did. They advocated that all the nation's eligible poor should apply. They felt such a strain to city budgets would force Washington to address the poverty problem.

Forty-five years later, Beck took to the airwaves of Fox News and his own radio program, warning the public about the obscure article.

"Let me introduce you to the people who you would say are fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system. They're really two people," he said, "Cloward and Piven."

For about the last three months, week after week, Beck's been hammering away at Piven and her husband. From their 45-year-old article, he sees a vast conspiracy to overthrow the American financial system.

On Friday, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, as businesses added jobs for the 13th straight month.

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that it was ending Glenn Beck’s daily cable-TV show.

These are not unrelated events.

When Beck’s show made its debut on Fox News Channel in January 2009, the nation was in the throes of an economic collapse the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night — and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away. Beck responded with a doubling-down that ultimately brought about his demise on Fox.

He pushed further into dark conspiracies, urging his viewers to hoard food in their homes and to buy freeze-dried meals for sustenance when civilization breaks down. He spun a conspiracy theory in which the American left was in cahoots with an emerging caliphate in the Middle East. And, most ominously, he began to traffic regularly in anti-Semitic themes.

This vile turn for Beck reached its logical extreme two weeks ago, when he devoted his entire show to a conspiracy theory about various bankers, including the Rothschilds, to create the Federal Reserve. To make this case, Beck hosted the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who has publicly argued that the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “accurately describes much of what is happening in our world today.”

Griffin’s Web site dabbles in a variety of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including his view that “present-day political Zionists are promoting the New World Order.”

A month earlier, Beck, on his radio program, had described Reform rabbis as “generally political in nature,” adding: “It’s almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way.”

A few months before that, he had attacked the Jewish billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, as a “puppet master” and read descriptions of him as an “unscrupulous profiteer” who “sucks the blood from people.” Beck falsely called Soros “a collaborator” with Nazis who “saw people into the gas chambers.”

Fox deserves credit for finally putting an end to this. Its joint statement with Beck’s production company, claiming that they will “work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects,” is almost certainly window-dressing; you can be confident Fox won’t have Beck reopening what his Fox News colleague Shepard Smith dubbed the “fear chamber.”

Apparently even Fox News has its limits.

You know you're a conservative nutjob when Fox News considers you too extreme to broadcast.

Tudamorf wrote:
Apparently even Fox News has its limits.
You know you're a conservative nutjob when Fox News considers you too extreme to broadcast.

He'll be back in time for the 2012 elections (How long he lasts after the elections is anyones guess though). Fox "News" is an opportunistic capitalist corporation and is in it to make money, not report the News. Election coverage (on Fox) is about making money and slinging mud, not reporting the News, something The Fox Corp. (& Glenn Beck) is good at doing.

AbyssalMage wrote: Fox "News" is an opportunistic capitalist corporation and is in it to make money, not report the News. Election coverage (on Fox) is about making money and slinging mud, not reporting the News, something The Fox Corp. (& Glenn Beck) is good at doing.

AbyssalMage wrote: Fox "News" is an opportunistic capitalist corporation and is in it to make money, not report the News. Election coverage (on Fox) is about making money and slinging mud, not reporting the News, something The Fox Corp. (& Glenn Beck) is good at doing.

You liberals have 15 some odd national outlets for your biased and slanted news.
Conservatives have 1.

Take off the kneepads, put away the lube, stand up, and pull up your pants. And wipe your mouth.

I can tell you the stations I do watch either are slanted left (MSNBC & its subsidiaries) and admit it or are nuetral (PBS) but the others I wouldn't consider "Liberal" in any sense of the word. ABC, NBC, and CBS are slanted "right", its just that they take a more independent/conservative view that upsets the "far leaning right" and why you (and the rest of Fox "nation") call them "liberal." I can't discuss the other news organizations but considering they are all (almost all?) owned by prominant conservative CEO's, I doubt there programming is at worst center/right.

Also, you have to consider the fact that most news organizations are followers and not leaders. Fox "News" is the leader in listeners (I would say news, but any educated person can't call what they do, news) so it makes sense for other networks to copy their buisness model to attract more viewers (and advertisement dollars).

ABC, NBC, and CBS are certainly left leaning.
CEOs are apolitical. They just want to make money. They don't care how.
Making money is causal for them, not politics.

Most news organizations are leaders. They view themselves as the Fourth Estate, The Watchdog of Government. People who get into journalism, in the first place, want to because they think they can change things. Make a change. Make a difference. That is Liberalism.

Conservatives want things to stay the same, to keep things predictable. No one gets into Journalism, majors in Journalism, so that they can help keep things the same. If you don't know that, you don't know Journalism students.

Oh, by the way, I am not part of the Fox Nation, as you put it, as you put me. I am an outside observer. I think Fox is just as stupid as all your Liberal outlets. I am just stating that there is only one stupid network on the Conservative side, there are 15 stupid networks on the Liberal side.

Which rigged up explosives in a Chevy pickup. To prove side impacts caused gas fires.
They used remote control, RC plane remotes, to blow up trucks on impact for their story.

Remember that it was CBS, which paid Michael Jackson 1 million dollars to appear on ED Bradley's segment of 60 Minutes. Then gave him a 4 million dollar infomercial, later that week on Friday night primetime.

They are all whores. And your Liberal whores smell worse, have BV or worse, have worse hygiene, and there are more of them out walking the street. And they get the worst ghetto negroid ebonix attitude when you call them the whores that they are.

Fox has only one whore doing outcalls, nothing on the street, and she is tall and blond, and she got no negroid attitude, no big ass fat cottage cheese thighs either. No BV at all.

Still whores. Rachel Maddow would put on a strap on and bend your ass over, and FF your girlfriend, at the same time, while you're watching. And Keith Obermann would be there cheering her on. And Nancy Grace would be there thinking, why don't she bend me over, or FF me? Edit, Keith would be thinking the same thing as Nancy.

ABC, NBC, and CBS are certainly left leaning.
CEOs are apolitical. They just want to make money. They don't care how.
Making money is causal for them, not politics.

So you just made my point, to make money currently (advertisement dollars) you are going to lean "right", not "left" because you are going to copy the "leader" and that is currently Fox. Mabye in very limited local markets (Chicago, SF, NY, ect.) you may keep a more independent/liberal slant but any news you report on state wide/nationally will definately have a independent/conservitive slant.

And CEO's (Who run News outlets) are very political, at least current ones.

Most news organizations are leaders. They view themselves as the Fourth Estate, The Watchdog of Government.

That may have been the role of Journalism 20-30 years ago, but it hasn't been that way in a long time. (I would argue) It hasn't been that way sense Vietnam with Watergate being there last big "Hoo Raw." True Journalism has been on a steady decline sense then. Al Jezeera has had better journalism reporting than any US (Europeon) journalism outlet sense the late 90's with the exception of The Associated Press. It took WikiLeaks to break the "lethargy" off of many US News Organizations but even that ultimely is falling flat thanks to the Conservative media.

People who get into journalism, in the first place, want to because they think they can change things. Make a change. Make a difference. That is Liberalism.

I would argue most Journalist majors want to report the news. The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How (The 5 W's, I'm sure you remember) are what journalists care about. What makes the news (in the current 24 hour media cycle) is what sells, so stories that don't contain sex, drugs, or politics don't get covered. Thats why new's coverage have gone from 30 minutes (when I was little) to 2+ hours long on local TV (ABC, NBC, and CBS). They are copying Fox's model. It also explains why there are more News channels on Cable than there were when I was younger.

Its been branded "Liberal" because when you report on these things it naturally makes people want to "Make a change" and "Make a difference." "Making a Change" is a human trait. "Making a difference" is a human trait. Something modern Conservatives detest as "Liberal" and have branded it as such. Human evolution has always been about making a difference and changing things so they are better for the next generation (Your kids and Grandkids). That is neither Liberal or Conservative.

True journalism cares about the 5 "W's" (and the "H" if possible). It is up to the individual to direct that information into a Conservative (Things are working as planned) or Liberal (This isn't working) result.

Conservatives want things to stay the same, to keep things predictable. No one gets into Journalism, majors in Journalism, so that they can help keep things the same. If you don't know that, you don't know Journalism students.

Or I can just debunk everything you said.

Oh, by the way, I am not part of the Fox Nation, as you put it, as you put me. I am an outside observer. I think Fox is just as stupid as all your Liberal outlets. I am just stating that there is only one stupid network on the Conservative side, there are 15 stupid networks on the Liberal side.

The fact you don't realize how subtle some conservative news networks are underscores your sucebtablity to them. The fact that you believe that there are 15 Liberal networks and only 1 Conservative network speaks volumes about how influenced you are by their reporting.